Household Organization

by Florence Caddy

The postman's knock is well known, and in families where there is no great eagerness to get the letters, they fall naturally into the letter-box, which should be made deep, and the slit large enough to admit the Times newspaper easily.

In Italy it is usual to write the word fuori on a card, and stick it in the door when one is not at home; and in this case visiting-cards would also be left in the letter-box. We might adopt this method, or even the Temple fashion of saying when we are likely to be home again.

The tradesmen are the most difficult to arrange for, and here invention must be called into play. Tradespeople first call for orders, and then with supplies.

Suppose we had our doors fitted with a kind of turnstile door, something like the birdcage gates which used to be at the Zoological Gardens, only with the outside made of wood, closely fitting, so as to admit no draught. This, by a push, would allow the goods to be deposited within the door, on the table upon which the cage turns round. The opening should be of a size to admit a leg of mutton easily. The goods, once deposited, could not be removed from the outside, as the door only works one way.

Through this opening the lady-housekeeper might give her own orders without their interpretation by an underling, and without being exposed to the public gaze, as she would be if the front door were fully opened, while the leg-of-mutton aperture would be sufficient for both parties to see to whom they were speaking. In the case of a single door, instead of the very general folding doors, it would be necessary to have the cage made to fold back, and the table to let down with hinges, to allow of the door being opened back against the wall; the table might be lowered after midday. This arrangement would also dispose of most of the casuals—the beggars, pedlars, and others who haunt our door-steps—to the entire prevention of hall robberies.

And now we come to the last and most considerable division of the subject—our visitors; comprising relatives, friends, and strangers. If we lived in Arcadia, or in the Colonies, we should most likely be so glad to see our friends that we should joyfully run to welcome them. Or if we were very great people indeed, we should not mind doing as Queen Victoria does, going to receive them at the moment of their arrival. But as we are middling people, and neither shepherdesses nor queens, we dread being natural for fear of being thought poor.

For people are very much more afraid of being thought poor than of being poor, seeing how often they let themselves be dragged into poverty by idleness and extravagance. The best remedy I know for the fancied difficulty of opening our door to our visitors, is to have no friends but those whom we are glad to see, and to begin every new acquaintance by putting it at once on a footing of actual fact, letting people understand that we try to make the best of our means, and live within them. Then, if they will not take us upon our own terms, we need not regret that they do not wish for our friendship.

We shall find, in actual practice, that it makes very little difference to their opinion of us, if when we are at home we have the courage to tell them so ourselves; or if a dirty maid-servant, after an interval of waiting, receives their cards in the corner of her apron because her hands are black, and says she will go and see if "missis" is at home, or even if a neat parlour-maid fulfils the same office, and ushers visitors into a brown holland-encased room, leaving them to remark the time the lady of the house takes arranging her dress and her smiles previous to appearing.

In whatsoever way the ceremonial may be performed is of importance to none but ourselves. The visitor forgets it immediately, only retaining a general impression, cheery or dismal, as the case may seem; and if we are nice people and our visitors nice people, according to our respective ideas on that subject, we shall cultivate each other's acquaintance all the same.

It is immensely hard work to make five hundred a year look like a thousand. The effort to do so is seen through in an instant by a keen-sighted observer, and then it is ten chances to one if you get credit for what you really possess. It is never worth while to pinch and pare our everyday life for the sake of a few occasions of display.